Movies: The Wife Between Us

Observing that "the same book scout who urged Holly Bario to buy the rights to the book The Girl on the Train when it was a mere manuscript has struck again," the Hollywood Reporter wrote that Steven Spielberg's Amblin Partners, where Bario is president of production, "is now planning a film of the psychological thriller The Wife Between Us by a new writing duo: Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen." The novel will be released January 9 by St. Martin's Press.

"Marcy Drogin, who found Girl on the Train, called me when we were in production for that movie," Bario recalled. "She had read The Wife Between Us and she told me, 'This is going to be a big book too and you have to take the chance.' Since I was living Girl on the Train at that moment, I was already sort of fever-dreaming--thinking about unreliable narrators and women characters who aren't great to each other or to themselves."

THR noted that Pekkanen was working as a journalist eight years ago when she began writing her first novel (The Opposite of Me) and placed Hendricks, who spent more than 20 years at Simon & Schuster, "atop her list of 'dream' editors.... Pekkanen's dream became a reality, with Hendricks ultimately editing seven of her books, including several bestsellers. Author and editor became such close friends that soon after Hendricks decided to quit corporate publishing, Pekkanen suggested, 'Let's write a book together.' "

"We approached our story cinematically from the start and framed our chapters as scenes," Hendricks recalled. "And we pushed each other to keep the narrative taut on every page."